Project calendar

Wijnja's blog

The Environmental Change Institute (ECI) in the University of Oxford is seeking to appoint a part-time Research Assistant and a full-time Postdoctoral Research Assistant to join the existing research team on the two EU funded research projects OPENNESS and IMPRESSIONS. The IMPRESSIONS project focuses on developing modelling capability to explore the cross-sectoral and cross-scale impacts and vulnerabilities associated with high-end scenarios of climate change. The closing date for applications is 12:00 noon on Wednesday 18 December 2013.

The OpenNESS case study - Cairngorm National Park, Scotland - was launched as a UK Long-term Social-Ecological Research (LTSER) Platform on Thursday 14 November 2013. OpenNESS features as a ground breaking project which encompasses many of the ideals of an LTSER Platform. Jan Dick, the case study leader of the Cairngorm National Park, explained the aims and ambitions of the OpenNESS project in Aviemore. Read more »

During an international workshop of the OpenNESS project, some 90 participants discussed ways to apply theory, concepts and models on ecosystem services and natural capital in real situations. Representatives of the 26 case studies from Europe and globally took part in an intensive three-day programme to exchange experiences, express demands and find solutions for their cases. Read more »

The FP7 project Biodiversity Virtual e-Laboratory (BioVeL) develops a virtual e-laboratory that supports research on biodiversity issues using large amounts of data from cross-disciplinary sources. The main goal of BioVeL is to develop open source web-based research tools for managing workflows, which can offer effective solutions for common scientific tasks requiring significant computational power and the use of large public datasets. One of BioVeL's main objectives is to create workflows for the ecosystem services (ES) community. Accordingly, there is a potential cooperation between BioVeL and OpenNESS, which will be explored in the near future. Read more »

The Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) is an important cross-cutting methodology that will be used in OpenNESS. To kick things off, and to develop ideas and build a shared understanding of methods and issues, a workshop about BBNs was organized by WP 1 in Nottingham in September 2013. The event provided the OpenNESS SME partner HUGIN Expert A/S (BBN software developer) an opportunity to provide some initial training on their software, and project members to discuss how to use the methods in the project. Read more »

From 9 to 12 September 2013, the IALE 2013 European Congress took place in Manchester, UK. This major international event examined how and why European landscapes are changing and how landscape ecology can help us to plan for the future at local to global scales. Marta Pérez-Soba and Sandra S. Luque from OpenNESS organised a symposium about the role that a geographical location plays in the operationalisation of the concepts of ES and NC. Read more »

At a joint brainstorm session by the OpenNESS and OPERAs projects, plans for a common online platform for ecosystem services and natural capital were discussed. Researchers of both projects met in the Amsterdam public library, a perfect setting for discussing a platform for knowledge exchange. Read more »

The first OpenNESS cross work package meeting will be held at Loch Leven, Kinross, Scotland from 21 to 24 October 2013. It will focus on the interaction of the OpenNESS case studies with its methodological work packages (WP1-4). The problems defined in the case studies will be matched to the methods. Read more »

In this short video interview Work Package 3 leader Dr Paula Harrison outlines the aims and activities of OpenNESS and OPERAs. The BioFresh blog is a forum to discuss the science, policy and conservation of freshwater ecosystems alongside wider environmental issues. Read more »

Image: Click on the image on the right to watch the interview with Dr Paula Harrison, the button in the lower right-hand corner allows you to watch it full screen